by Stephen Hunt
‘How long for your fuse to run?’
‘I trimmed it long for two leagues,’ said Alexamir.
Cassandra cursed his time-keeping system, almost as barbaric as the nomad’s manners. If a horse could gallop a league in ten minutes that made his fuse burn twenty, and with at least fifteen of those already lapsed, then there should be a healthy blaze erupting in town in less than five minutes. ‘This way. Follow me.’
‘You mean to slip through here? There are two sentry towers on the slopes outside these tunnels, with skyguards watching for friends who wish to land – or their foemen among the pirates of the air. Better to descend from the town. We can squeeze through their sun slits after climbing the cave.’
‘We are unlikely to be challenged inside the skyguard’s airfield,’ whispered Cassandra. ‘When I landed I saw their priests blessing planes and chanting for friendly winds.’
‘Priests do not scale peaks here,’ said Alexamir, stubbornly. ‘There is a long winding road outside Talatala that leads down to the villages of the valley. We could hazard that, but it has many guard posts on the way with fighters who will be curious why two timid temple chanters dare to venture out at night. I could easily defeat them, but not before they fire a warning beacon and bring the entire town down the slopes for me to slay.’
And I’m sure you could handle them and not think it too much. ‘Just follow me. Your golden fox knows all there is to understand about burrows.’
Alexamir muttered under his breath, but did as he was bid. She would have to work on his slowness to obey orders. Cassandra would happily defer to the nomad when it came to which local mosses it was safe to pick from the rocks for food, or even which horses were likely to possess the most endurance. But the wild thief needed to realize that when it came to matters of strategy, the planning was best left to superior Vandian intelligence. Mine, in fact.
There was no sign of sentries in the opening chamber of the skyguard. Most would be back with their families or abed by now. She could hear a distant clink of tools and muffled voices. Doubtless, a maintenance hangar with some final duties being completed by ground staff. Alexamir was right. Any watchful eyes would be in the fortified positions on the slopes outside, scanning the skies and crags and mountain road for enemies, for what danger could rise from deep within their town’s stone heart? She would give them cause to regret their complacency. Inside the first tunnel, Cassandra located and quietly opened a round wooden door in the wall and discovered what she had thought would lie inside – a narrow fire fighters’ passage, just as you would find on a Vandian carrier. When damaged aircraft crashed hard in the landing tunnels, the ground staff needed a way to bypass the flaming wreckage and tackle the full extent of the blaze. She lifted a torch from the wall and indicated to Alexamir that this was their way to pass unseen through the stronghold. He was clearly uneasy about entering a place even closer to a tomb, but she knew he wouldn’t make a lie of his boasts. The nomad ducked through the doorway with a vexed shake of his head. Ventilation ducts running to Talatala’s slopes made the fire tunnel as chilly as a food cellar, and she held up her flickering torch and counted down the paces to a chamber she remembered passing. When she reached zero, she found the nearest door and pushed it open a sliver to check for Rodalians. None that she could see, so she opened the door and stepped out into a large circular chamber. She could feel bitingly cold air from outside drawn down the five tunnels that branched out in front of the space. Above Cassandra, a framework of well-greased wooden rails rested with a turntable mounted in the ceiling’s centre. And behind her a series of side-chambers, a number of the skyguard’s small triangular-shaped aircraft hanging suspended from rope cradles inside each space.
Cassandra found a likely-looking two-seat kite in one of the hollows, and indicated to Alexamir that they should drag it along the rails towards a launch tunnel. ‘This will do just fine.’
Alexamir’s cyan face had suddenly turned as pale as Cassandra’s. ‘You cannot mean to fly the Rodalians’ wooden pigeon?’
‘That’s exactly what I intend to do,’ said Cassandra, starting to heave against the plane. It rocked in its rope cradle, but began to slip along the wooden rail. ‘You don’t need to worry. I mastered simple mono-winged craft before learning to pilot a helo.’ She felt a stab of sadness at the memory. It had been Cassandra’s personal pilot, Hesia, who had trained her to fly. And she had betrayed them to the house’s enemies at court and then a second time during the slave revolt.
‘Flying is only half their magic,’ spluttered Alexamir. ‘We may wear their priests’ robes, but we cannot command the winds as the mountain dwellers do. We will be smashed to splinters against the rocks.’
‘There’s demon turbulence outside, I grant you. But I’ll climb high for altitude and leave the worst of the weather below. We’ll be safe enough. I’m planning to push north on a trade wind, not strafe their valleys and villages.’
‘Even the great merchants of the air do not risk Rodal’s skies,’ warned Alexamir. ‘They pass over the marshes of Hellin.’
Cassandra bit back a sharp reply. All of a sudden the horseman fancies himself an expert airman? The insufferable arrogance of the nomad. She was the one trained to fly this kite, not him. Cassandra could see she would have to goad him into the spotter’s cockpit. ‘I think that the great Alexamir is scared of a steed made of canvas and wood. Perhaps he was pecked by an eagle during one of his raids into Rodal and does not fancy taking to the sky in case he meets the bird again?’
‘I fear nothing and no one, but I show respect to power by saying what is famously known,’ grunted Alexamir, ‘that the spirits of the mountain are unfriendly and ill-disposed to foreigners. Rodalians may tame the winds, but only because they respect their spirits’ power.’ Despite Alexamir’s protestations, he helped her push the aircraft towards the turntable and lower it into the middle of the circular platform, before throwing his back against a wooden wheel meant for a harnessed pony. He groaned with exertion before slowly cranking the turntable and plane’s weight towards a launch tunnel. The plane she intended to steal would do. Two open cockpits in a line in the centre of the triangular flying wing with a rear-mounted propeller behind them, while protruding from its domed nose, a gun barrel riddled with ventilation holes to cool the heated metal parts. The fuselage was shaped in an oddly organic way, with curves and protrusions where she wouldn’t have expected them, more like a hand-carved musical instrument than the product of a factory line. Cassandra went to the rear, removed a fuel stick, opened the engine’s reservoir hub and checked its fuel level. Fully fuelled, she noted with satisfaction.
Cassandra left the kite and headed towards a chart she had noticed pinned to the hangar wall. It showed the territory’s trade winds marked in standard library guild script. Alexamir’s words proved correct. The main trade winds passed over a country called Hellin lying to the east of Rodal. This region of Rodal rose as a maelstrom of swirling air currents, tight against each other like a thousand furiously twisting serpents. A single high altitude current passed over Talatala heading north, another forking west towards the Lancean Ocean, none marked flowing south. Even if she had been minded to break her oath to Alexamir and try to make for Weyland, a single tank of fuel wouldn’t be nearly enough against the headwinds. And I doubt the locals will refuel me when I land, however I flutter my eyelids at them. She checked the wind speed of the north-bound current and her eyes widened. She examined the chart again, but she had read true the first time. Nearly six hundred miles an hour! That was approaching the speed of a Vandian warship. She glanced nervously at the flimsy-looking triangular aircraft. How is that going to stand up to such velocities? The high altitude wind was marked as The Bdur’rkhangmar and nothing about the name augured well to her mind. Well, they wouldn’t need more than a tank of fuel to put Rodal behind them, but judging from the chart, a vast area of still air squatted over the steppes north of Rodal’s tall mountain ranges. Rodal’s ravines and canyons had sucked
up all of the hot dry air out of the Arak-natikhan plains, leaving its northern neighbour effectively becalmed. Any merchant carrier crossing far above Arak-natikh’s flat open expanses would need to ensure it was fully fuelled before attempting the journey, for the nomads surely grew no fuel crops to sell to traders. As for Cassandra, she’d get as far as the steppes in her stolen kite, but not much further before needing to switch to horseback. She watched Alexamir despondently walking the length of the aeroplane, tapping its canvas fuselage as though checking for tears. You’ll earn your passage soon enough. She discovered an aviator’s cap and goggles and was searching the hangar for a spare flight jacket to protect against Rodal’s cold when distant bells started to clang a strident warning from the direction of Talatala. Damn, we’re out of time. Alexamir’s parting act of arson had been detected. She sprinted back to the turntable as the clatter of approaching boots grew louder, more than one set of feet. Locals. Probably looking to secure the planes and fuel in the event the fire spread out of control. Cassandra climbed up toward the plane’s forward cockpit, taking seconds to inspect the strange, foreign controls, a few simple dials and a wooden flight stick, but before she could mount the cockpit she realized that it was too late. Talatala’s ground staff were upon them.
Jacob had never felt more tired. He had endured weeks with hardly any sleep, even though he was lying horizontally, manacled to a hard wooden table. Every time he tried to close his eyes, freezing cold water was hurled over his face, and when even that wasn’t enough to stop the fitless bursts of sleep which overcame him, he was wired up to a cart-like machine with a sulphurous-smelling battery lodged on its platform, burning his skin every time he nodded off. Jacob lost all track of time. Days, weeks, maybe months of such treatment, until he started seeing visions. His dead wife Mary standing in the corner, crying, and she wouldn’t stop however much he begged her. Weeping for … Carter’s two beautiful brothers sprawled across the cell’s straw, every bit as pale and trembling as when the fever had claimed them in their final hours. Constable Wiggins came to him too, the old lawman laconic and scathing of how easily Jacob had let him die at Nix’s hands. All of my ghosts. No, not all of them. Not even a fraction of the true tally. All the soldiers he had put in the dirt in the Burn. There were countless phantoms, far too many to fit in a punishment cell under the palace. King Marcus was right. It didn’t matter what name he took. Jake Silver, Jacob Carnehan. Both were butchers. The only thing he regretted was that there weren’t more corpses to add to his reckoning when he finally went before the saints. King Marcus, Tom Purdell, Benner Landor, Sergeant Nix, he whispered the names to stop himself going insane. Clinging to his hatred like a cork raft in a raging sea.
By the time the man in the white surgeon’s apron appeared, Jacob was so tired and ragged he needed every iota of his will just to focus on what the visitor was saying.
‘Yes, yes, I’m real enough,’ said the surgeon. ‘What things you must have seen over the last few weeks. The mind is so predictable when stressed. My name is Keall Merrisor; I am a doctor of the College of the Snake and Purple, an imperial surgeon. Do you understand what an honour this is? We normally only minister to the emperor, his family, and any allies whose lives the emperor wishes to preserve.’
‘Vandia’s found a real snake in our palace,’ growled Jacob. ‘I wouldn’t count on King Marcus’s loyalty, though. It’s for sale to the highest bidder.’
‘Now then, my friend. I’m not terribly fond of my posting here either. A year in your dreary, foul-stinking barbarian backwater. This city has only recently introduced electricity. Do you know how hard it is to read by oil-lamp at my age? I pray every day to my ancestors for my tedious service here to be done.’
‘Keep talking, torturer,’ said Jacob. ‘Please. You’re sending me to sleep.’
Keall placed a black bag on the platform where Jacob lay bound. ‘I am no imperial torturer, my friend. They’re a separate college. I demand the truth. Their disciples demand an example, a slow excruciating spectacle. The two matters are mutually exclusive. But your presence here has done me something of a favour. This element of my work has been sadly neglected of late. Your chieftain has only drawn on my healing skills – primarily for the pox he catches from his predilection for sexual congress without prophylactics. Almost as dull as the host of illusory diseases he imagines himself struck by … every sniffle a fever and every rash the onset of a plague.’
‘I should be so lucky. Let him die. You’ll get home faster.’
‘And wouldn’t my enemies in Vandia love that,’ said the surgeon. ‘The same resentful bastards in the college that encouraged my posting here. But I will show them how ingenuity may prosper, even in adversity.’
‘I know what you’ve been doing,’ said Jacob. ‘Tenderizing me like a piece of steak. And now you’re here to fry me. I’ve had people interrogated, Doctor. Maybe it’s only fitting that I should get a taste of my own medicine.’ The Vandian just chuckled and made no comment; and when Jacob’s vision started to fade, his own screams woke him. The machine he was wired to had detected his slumber and burned into his flesh like a vat of acid.
‘No dropping off, please. Duty, duty,’ said Keall, removing a glass hypodermic from his case. He found a small vial and carefully began to charge the needle. ‘Duty is what we must remember. Now, I’d like to know where exactly in the Rodalian Mountains the Lady Cassandra Skar is being held hostage. An expeditionary force will shortly be arriving from Vandia and after I play my part in rescuing the emperor’s granddaughter, I hope to be recognized as a champion of the imperium. The great houses will vie with each other to have me select a high position among their ranks.’
‘You don’t need to fill me with that poison,’ said Jacob. ‘Just let me rest. Your royal brat’s being taken to Rodal’s capital, Hadra-Hareer.’
‘So easy?’ Keall held the needle up to the light as he tapped it. ‘Shall I trust you? I think not. You’re one of the leaders of the slave revolt. A barbarian who helped crush a legion in the shadow of the great stratovolcano. And you simply give me her ladyship’s location like that? Why?’
‘Lean closer, I’ll tell you.’
Keall frowned, checking Jacob’s manacles were fully secure before he bent down. ‘Why, then, my friend?’
‘Because one legion’s not nearly enough.’ Jacob found the purchase to whip his skull forward, striking Keall’s nose. The imperial surgeon stumbled back indignantly, raising a hand to staunch the blood fountaining across his chin.
‘Healing that should make a change from curing Marcus’s mangy trouser sword, Doctor.’
‘Filthy savage!’ Keall leaned over and struck the cart’s control panel, sending Jacob’s back arching up in agony as current lashed his body. The surgeon’s blood-stained fingers settled around Jacob’s arm and with the other hand, he drove the needle into the pastor’s flesh. ‘I’ll have the truth from you now.’
Keall paced up and down the cell for a couple of minutes, angrily staunching his own bleeding, waiting for his drugs to work their way through the pastor’s body. Jacob found himself drifting, losing all sense of weight and place. He had been remade as a barrage balloon floating over the battlements of Northhaven.
‘Where is Lady Cassandra Skar?’
‘The capital of Rodal,’ moaned Jacob. It was as though he was watching someone else speak. Not his lips moving at all. ‘In the custody of the skyguard and Sheplar Lesh.’
‘That was the truth after all, then?’ said Keall shocked. ‘Why?’
‘Because one legion isn’t enough.’
Keall shrugged, sadly. ‘You are nothing but a dirty savage … an ignorant fool. They’ll drag you back to Vandis for abducting the emperor’s granddaughter and record your punishment. In countless centuries’ time, imperial torturers will still be watching your pain during their apprenticeships as a demonstration of how one man can be made to suffer so much and for so long. But first our legions will arrive in your barbarian land and you will be wi
tness to a kind of hell that you have never seen before.’
The surgeon faded from sight, replaced by darkness, then burning agony as Jacob rode a series of shocks back to consciousness.
‘What was that you were mumbling?’ demanded Keall.
‘You’re wrong,’ said Jacob. ‘I have seen it before. The hell was mine.’
‘Too high a dose,’ said Keall, annoyed. ‘I must have given you too much. You’re babbling. Focus, now. I have more questions for you. There was an outlaw who fought alongside you when you led the slave revolt. An outlaw carrying many names … Sariel Teller. Sariel Player. Sariel Skel-Bane. Where is the devil now?’
‘Here,’ groaned Jacob.
‘Yes, he’s hiding here, but where in Weyland? What city, what region?’
‘Here.’
‘Very well. I shall wait until the dose weakens,’ sighed Keall.
‘I won’t,’ a weighted staff came crashing down onto the surgeon’s skull. Keall crumpled to the floor, striking Jacob’s restraining table on the way down.
Sariel leant against his staff, satisfied, wearing his brown leather coat etched with hundreds of intricate pictures as though they were tattoos in leather. The sorcerous vagabond had changed little since he’d vanished from Northhaven. His ancient face even more sunburnt by travel and lined with age, the same raggedy bleached white beard. Sariel wiped a tear of sweat from Jacob’s forehead and licked his finger, before his bright, devilish eyes flashed. ‘Aha. Severe neural hyperpolarization through sodium thiopental, a highly potent truth serum. The quack has injected you with far too much serum, though. Enough to make a bull-shark sing the truth, and sharks are renowned as the greatest liars in the ocean. It’s a wonder the fool’s allowed to practise.’ The old sorcerer reached out to seize Jacob’s hand and the pastor’s skin prickled as Sariel’s golden skin glowed like a swarm of fireflies. The warmth swelled, comfortable at first, then rising higher and higher through Jacob’s flesh, a raging heat that left him moaning and trembling. Jacob plummeted landward from the giddy clouds where he had just been drifting, but his mind was clear again.